Of fuel and other crises

I wonder what the President will be telling Nigerians on October 1, the National Day. Will he deliver a message of hope to a people who are weary of tightening their belts and enduring more of the pains they are feeling? Will he reel off a long list of achievements – laced with cold statistics and esoteric figures – which the average Nigerian cannot identify with?

In vain have I searched the neighbourhood stores for a loaf of the cassava bread, which has become regular on the presidential breakfast table since it made its debut a few months ago. Those who have been privileged to have a bite tell me the taste is great, but the question remains: when will ordinary folks get the loaf? The You Win – what a name – programme may be a revolutionary tool for addressing poverty among women, but where are the beneficiaries?

These and more may be on the list of the administration’s achievements, but one item that has regularly featured will, without doubt, be missing this time. Fuel.

From Abuja to Sokoto and Kontagora; Calabar and Lagos to Umuahia, the queues are lengthening. A litre costs about N150 in Ekiti and Ondo states. In some parts of the North, it is about N200. Incredible! The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says the scarcity is artificial, caused by inscrutable people who vandalised a pipeline. An attempt to repair the pipeline that was ripped open in Arepo, Ogun State, was resisted and three engineers were killed, the NNPC said. Now, it is using trucks to move fuel.

But, the popular thinking is that the corporation has not told the truth. Our refineries, old, often sick and vulnerable, cannot supply all that we require. And now, marketers who import fuel to bridge the gap are not paid.

The bold attempt to expose and punish those who have turned the subsidy regime into a bazaar of fraud and robbery – every young man with a glittering briefcase and a sharp Oxford Street suit is an oil and gas executive – has somehow compounded the pains it was supposed to remove. The Petroleum Product Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has done a lot to separate the original from the counterfeit, but the Ministry of Finance is yet to pay those who have passed the PPPRA test . The banks are holding such marketers by the throat and there is no cash for them to import more fuel. This is where the problem lies.

Marketers are being owed some N100 billion. The debts, according to the Ministry of Finance, are being verified. Can this go on ad infinitum? Do we really have the cash to pay? If we have exceeded the budget for subsidy because we under projected, why won’t Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala go back to the National Assembly to ask for more money? Ego? The fear of what the World Bank will say, having warned about budget deficit and balancing to bring down recurrent expenditure and shore up capital expenditure?

Whatever the situation may be, we need not go back to those days when men slept at filling stations. No. Those who have been found to have defrauded the system should face the law and those whose bills have been verified should be paid right away. Nigerians do not deserve another fuel crisis, considering its agonies.

It is unfortunate that the government blames everything on everybody except itself. Just on Tuesday in Abuja, the President, in a remarkable flashback, blamed the Occupy Nigeria fuel subsidy protests of January on a particular class who he accused of manipulating the crisis. I disagree. When petrol price jumped from N65 a litre to between N138 and N200 on New Year’s Day without a corresponding increase in workers’ pay, the masses didn’t need any prompting to resist what they saw as an act of crass wickedness.

As it was then, the subsidy removal argument remains puerile and galling. The government said it spent N1.3tr on fuel subsidy last year. The cash, it said, should have gone into reviving our dead infrastructure, but it went into some people’s pockets. To end the robbery and make fuel smuggling unattractive, fuel price must go up. Some strange logic. The public kicked, saying: why don’t you go after the fraudsters?

The government, as lethargic as ever, seemed reluctant to seize the suspected criminals. As it dithered about it all, the National Assembly moved in. It set up a probe of the subsidy scam. The exercise has spawned more scandals.

As I was saying, Dr Jonathan recalled the fuel price protests. He said: “There was a demonstration in Lagos…somebody was giving pure water that people in my village don’t have access to, well packaged bottled water, expensive food that ordinary people in Lagos cannot eat. They hired the best musicians to come and play and the best comedians to come and entertain in that demonstration.

“Are you telling me that demonstration is coming from the ordinary masses of Nigeria who want to communicate something to their government …?”

What message was the President trying to pass on? That a spontaneous mob action that will result in cataclysmic losses of human and material resources is better than a peaceful rally to appeal to the government’s conscience that it should never be against the people? That even with the senseless price increase that would have resulted in higher prices of goods and services the people had not had enough?

Didn’t the demonstration achieve its aim, with the roll back of the fuel price and the subsequent exposure of the subsidy cartel? Is it true Otueke – host of a huge construction site that is a federal university, among other projects – folks do not have access to sachet water ? Haba! Mr President, spare us the hyperbole.

The government must look inwards for its enemies – remember the President said Boko Haram had infiltrated the government – instead of blaming every headache and catarrh on the opposition. If the opposition keeps quiet, even as the government fumbles and stumbles, where then will be the place of politics? If Dr Jonathan thinks he is going to get some peace from the opposition, that is building a castle in the air; they will keep pummeling his actions and inaction. He is the one who should convince the world that he has a strategic vision to address all that ails this beautiful country of confounding complexities.

The infrastructural deficit remains as staggering as it was at the inception of this administration – safe for some jump in power supply, which some hawks in high places are trying to reverse with their greed and mercantile disposition.

Apparently tired of it all, lawyers in Abia State, launched a unique protest on Tuesday. They designated the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway a “valley of death” and challenged the state and federal governments to wake up to their responsibilities. The lawyers, decked out in rain boots and their customary black-and-white court dress, marched in Aba right on some of the bad roads. Can it be more bizarre?

Health workers in federal institutions are on strike, pushing for better pay and a more conducive working environment. In aviation, thousands of jobs are gone, even as the government sets its priority on building 11 more airports. What for?

The Jonathan presidency may be remembered not for its creative approach to resolving the numerous problems that assail Nigeria, but for its capacity to –perhaps innocently or deliberately or ineffectually – create more trouble. Perhaps.